


Third's a Charm

by Arsenic



Category: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards
Genre: Dark Past, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28254408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Addam asks a favor of Brand.
Relationships: Brandon "Brand" Saint John & Rune Saint John, Brandon "Brand" Saint John/Rune Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Third's a Charm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yasaman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yasaman/gifts).



> Hi treatee, thanks for your prompts, I had fun working with this. I ALSO skim sex scenes, so, I feel you there. In any case, I hope this is a little drop of joy for you.

Brand is holed up in the house’s armory doing a routine inventory and cleaning when Addam corners him. That is, Addam stands in the doorway respecting that this is Brand’s space and says, “I was hoping to catch you alone, have a moment?”

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Brand has sensed Addam’s desire to speak and has been avoiding him. But Addam has found him, fair and square, so Brand disassembles his CZ 75B and says, “Yeah.”

Addam stays where he is, which is both a good move, and annoyingly respectful. It’s not that Brand dislikes Addam, it’s that Brand _doesn’t_ dislike Addam. And yes, he knows that’s irrational. Things between him and Rune are many things. Rational is almost never one of them.

After a moment, Addam asks, “How much do you know about Rune and I having had sex?”

Brand doesn’t look up from the handgun. He needs time to consider what the hell he wants to say to that. Rune and him haven’t spoken about it. He knows Rune, though, at times better than himself. In the end he settles on, “I know nothing has happened since the first time and I know he’s still with you, and those two facts tell me enough.”

“I want him to feel safe. Always. And I’ve thought about this a lot, about how he works, how we work, just, all of it, and I’ve realized, for that to be the case, I need help. Your help.”

Brand looks up at that. “Addam.”

“Listen, all right? Listen, and then you can say no. Or yell at me. Or both.”

“Yell at you?” Brand asks.

Addam shrugs. “You get a bit I’m-the-adult-in-this-room at times.”

“You’ve met Rune.”

Addam inclines his head at the point. “Brand, he is safe with you and he knows it. Even when the two of you are in deadly peril his sense of safety lies in the fact that you’re there.”

Brand swallows a sigh. “What do you want, Addam?”

“I want him to feel safe when we’re having sex. Something that is already complicated enough without you being somewhere else.”

Brand goes over the conversation in his head, mostly trying to figure out if he’s having a weird hallucination. Or they haven’t gotten everything out of the house, and he’s being fucked with. The latter is unlikely. They’ve lived there for over two months and this is the first sign of an issue, so, probably not that. And he’s never hallucinated before if someone wasn’t actively fucking with his mind. That’s not completely impossible, given the residents of the house and their assorted friends. To test the theory, he asks, “What’s Quinn’s middle name?”

Addam looks puzzled by this question for a moment. Then, gently, he says, “I’m going to come into the room and touch your shoulder. I’m here and I’m real.”

He does just that, with his flesh hand, and Brand can feel the touch on his shoulder. “Fuck.”

Addam laughs, although not meanly. Of course not, because Addam is never intentionally mean. Fuckfuckfuckbears. Brand moves away from him. “I’ll consider the situation.”

Quietly, Addam says, “I’m not asking for me. I wouldn’t.”

Brand pins him with a look and tells him, “I’m not considering for you. I wouldn’t.”

* * *

Rune holds off for two days before asking Brand, “What’s going on with you and Addam?”

It’s a shocking amount of restraint. Not that Brand is going to recognize it in any way. “He asked a favor.”

Rune, who’s been half-reading something on his phone, looks up. “A favor. Not for himself he didn’t. Not from you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

Rune rolls his eyes. “Depends on the kind of flattery. Brand. What—”

Brand shakes his head. He needs Rune to not ask that question. 

“It’s upsetting you. I—do you want me to tell him to—”

“I can fight my own battles.”

“Yeah, I’m not entirely sure this is your battle, and you have to fight mine often enough. Can’t hurt to return the favor now and then.”

Brand runs a hand over his face. “Rune. First of all, you idiot, that is in my job description. Probably literally, although, lord only know where they keep that tome. Secondly, he—he isn’t in the wrong, here. But I have to make some decisions. Because if I say yes, even if nothing comes of it, there are certain things that can’t be undone.”

Rune gets in his space, then, clearly working to read what’s going on. In the end he puts his hand on the back of Brand’s head and pulls their foreheads together for a long, quiet moment. Then, without a word, he walks out of the room.

* * *

Brand wakes in the middle of the night with his heart pounding. There’s adrenaline flooding his mouth, and although he doesn’t remember the nightmare, he knows himself enough to be certain it was about Rune. About that night. Running a hand over his face, he says, “Fuck,” and gets up. He’s not going back to sleep.

Instead, he goes down to the training area and gets on the treadmill, uses the fading adrenaline to find a good pace and sinks into mindlessness of the activity. After an hour, he forces himself to stop running and stretches out. 

Addam is right. This is the crux of Brand’s problem. Well, this, and the fact that as easy as everything else in the world has been with Rune, this is the one area they’ve both stridently avoided exploring. There are triggers there just waiting to be discovered and tripped. And at the same time, they both know, no matter what, that they will do their utmost to avoid harming the other.

The whole thing is one nasty snarl and that’s without even bringing the question of feelings into it. Although, strangely, Brand thinks that might not be such a big part of the equation. Not because there aren’t feelings between them, just because their feelings are immutable. Rune and he are what they are to each other. Helping out with or engaging in each other’s sex lives doesn’t change that, it just creates a new dimension in it.

This awareness brings him back around to his starting point: Addam is right, at least regarding Rune’s sense of security. Brand sighs. It had been such a nice couple of days pretending there was a world in which he wouldn’t do anything to ease the path for Rune.

* * *

Brand finds Addam when he’s reading by himself, and says, “We ask Rune if he’s all right with it first.” He gets an undeniable thrill watching Addam nearly peel away from his own bones in shock.

Putting a hand against the wall to steady himself, Addam looks over at Brand and lifts an eyebrow. Brand shrugs. “Couldn’t help myself.”

After a moment, Addam says, “Yes, Rune’s consent to this, is, in fact, rather central.”

Stated like that, Brand can see how he sounded like an idiotic dickmunch, there.

“But then, so is yours,” Addam says.

Brand finds himself blinking. It’s not that he didn’t know that. Or even that he didn’t know Addam knew. It’s that he didn’t know Addam cared. In retrospect, that wasn’t fair. Addam is an almost offensively good guy.

“When would you like to talk with him?” Addam asks. “And do you want me there, or not?”

Brand isn’t the type to hesitate once a decision has been made. “Tonight, after dinner. And you’ll be there. If we’re doing this together, we’re doing this together.”

Addam dips his head in assent. Brand turns on his heel and goes to find something to hit.

* * *

The three of them don’t end up getting a chance to talk until the younger kids are in bed and the older ones have the decency to act like teenagers and hole themselves away. Corinne is out for a run, and Queenie’s retired to her wing, so the three of them can sit in the den. It’s neutral territory. Brand doesn’t want this being done in a bedroom.

There’s an awkward silence when they sit. After a bit, Rune says, “So. This is weird and unsettling.”

Addam laughs, and Brand is hard-pressed not to. Instead he says, “Your idea, you start,” to Addam, which gets him to stop laughing real quick.

Rune says, “I’m starting to think someone died. Did someone die?”

“Nobody died,” Brand tells him. Then amends that to, “Recently.”

“I asked him to join us,” Addam says softly. “To allow you safety in intimacy.”

There’s a moment of utter stillness before Rune says, “That’s—” He blinks and turns to Brand. “You agreed to this?”

“I agreed to discuss this with you, if it was something you wanted. Nothing more.”

Rune’s eyes are just a hair short of taking on Aspect. “You have got to be shitting me.”

“Rune—”

“Shut up,” Rune cuts Brand off. “You know damn well there are very few times when you have to do something simply because I need you to do it, no input on your side, and I would think this would very obviously not be one of them.”

Brand breathes through the instinctive gut punch of Rune’s panic. “Addam, can you give us the room for a minute?”

Addam moves to the hall, closing the French doors behind him and Brand says, “Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the idiot—”

“Stop. You’re not forcing me to do this. You wouldn’t even if it was the only thing that would save you and Addam. I’m not you, Rune, I’m not, but I was there. I was—” Brand forces himself to inhale. “I was there.”

“Brand.” Rune steps into his space, not touching, just standing there.

“He came to me and he asked for my help on your behalf and I told him I would think about it and I did. I thought about it and this is the decision I made. Now it’s your turn to think.”

“The problem,” Rune says quietly, “is that I don’t have to think. Not really. Not if I believe it’s what you want.”

Brand closes his eyes and pulls Rune into an embrace. “Stop fighting against yourself so damn hard.”

“That and you have kept me alive.”

“Trust me when I say I can do it on my own.”

Rune’s, “I trust you,” takes a while to come, and is shaky. For all that, it’s sincere.

* * *

The decision having been made is one thing. Actually doing anything about it? That’s very clearly going to be another. It gets to a point where Max asks Rune if things are all right, body language tense. Rune gets him calmed down and says, “Okay, we’re gonna do this before someone in this household loses their mind.”

Addam nods. “Tonight, my rooms.”

Brand cocks an eyebrow. Addam says, “He can’t have possibly unfortunate memories in his or your rooms. This way—”

Brand holds a hand up. It makes sense. He doesn’t love it, but it makes sense. “That works.”

“Tonight,” Rune says. “Good.”

* * *

Addam, unsurprisingly, has done everything possible to make his rooms a calming space. He’s so fucking thoughtful. It’s as annoying as it is useful, since, if he wasn’t, Brand would probably have to kill him. The lights are a low-lit blue, there’s fresh air coming in from several opened windows, he’s airing a bottle of wine and has made sure they have plenty of water. There’s even grapes and cheese. Because Addam.

Despite all of this, Rune is wearing bravado like a coat. And suddenly, there’s nothing complicated about this. Brand is here for Rune, just as always. Brand says, “C’mere,” and Rune comes, like he always has when Brand has told him and meant it, like Rune isn’t one of the world’s most powerful people. Brand runs his fingers through Rune’s hair, and without even meaning for it to happen, they’re kissing.

Brand always thought this would be awkward, if they took this step. It’s not, though. Like everything else, it’s just them. Rune pulls away enough to breathe, enough to say, “Addam.”

“Hero?” Addam sounds…uncertain. 

Brand finds he doesn’t like it as much as he thought he would. He puts his hand out. Rune smiles against his jaw. Addam, uncertain or not, doesn’t hesitate, taking the invitation, putting himself beside Brand so they are both there for Rune, but not surrounding him.

Rune smiles at Addam. It’s a smile Brand knows, but rarely sees. It makes him look as young as he is, as they are. From the look on Addam’s face, Brand doesn’t think he’s seen this smile before, seen Rune’s face so open.

“Well,” Rune taunts. “Gonna kiss me, or gonna make Brand do all the work?”

Addam laughs, bends down for a kiss. Brand has seen them together, of course, he’s even seen them kiss. There’s very little of Rune’s life he doesn’t see. He’s never _watched_ before. And watching, now, he can admit that the two of them are beautiful together. Regal, maybe, is the right word.

Brand slips a hand under the hem of Rune’s shirt, running his fingers up Rune’s spine. Context is such a strange thing. He’s checked Rune’s spine for injuries more times than he can count. Rune presses back against the touch. “Yeah,” Brand murmurs. “Right here.”

Rune finds Brand’s free hand with one of his, clasping on tightly without ever breaking the kiss. It is Addam who draws back, who asks, “Good, Hero?”

Rune’s fingers tighten. “Good.”

* * *

None of them are virgins, but Brand doesn’t think any of the three of them have a vast amount of experience. He’s certainly never been in bed with two men before. The logistics are complicated and awkward and they spend a lot more of the night laughing with each other and having to try something else than actually having sex.

At one point, they have to retrieve Addam from the floor, when he falls off the bed. It’s silly and fun and somehow still hot. 

Addam cleans them up afterward and brings them the snacks. Rune raises an eyebrow to say, _See?_

Brand rolls his eyes. _Yeah, I know why he lives with us, dipshit._

Rune laughs. Addam pauses for a second, aware he’s missed something. He doesn’t ask, though, he just holds out a piece of cheese for Brand. Brand takes it with his teeth, startling Addam into a laugh as well.

Rune leans into Brand. Brand holds steady.


End file.
